Seattle Quilt

 I’ve been admiring scrappy quilts lately, especially the work of Amanda Jean Nyberg. I’m still sad, years later, that she discontinued her blog but I’m glad she maintains her instagram for now. And with all that scrappy goodness, I’ve felt inspired to just sew. 

After finishing a more finicky pattern, especially, I was tired and really wanted to just sew. And I have loads of solid scraps that seem to multiply and never get touched. I decided to try out some improv scrap quilting and opted for a log cabin. Not very imaginative, I know this has historically been a staple of modern improv. But I’m still pretty new to improv and it’s a staple because it’s effective. So I went for it. I chose a color scheme of mostly blues and grays with accents in pink and yellow. 

I tried to be judicious on my scrap usage because I hate wasting fabric and didn’t want to cut pieces down by less than I could use elsewhere and that really drove a lot of the design decisions, which means some blocks aren’t necessarily very sound color-wise. That’s okay. I’m pretty pleased with my first go, even though there are blocks that aren’t effective. 

I was surprised it felt smaller than I expected. It’s 60x70, with 10” blocks. It’s a reasonable size, but it still felt small. It’s okay. I was really running out of scraps anyway. Rather, I was running out of different appropriately-sized scraps. My solids box is still overflowing, haha. 

As I was getting ready to make this quilt, I sorted out my solid scraps. I had them in a cardboard box because they outgrew my plastic scrap box they had been in. They’re still in the cardboard box, but I separated them into a few different groups and use bags to keep them separated. I have grays and blacks, warm neutrals and browns, blues, greens, and yellows, reds, oranges, pinks and purples. I struggle with solids storage. I also have some solid cuts in my stash drawers, but some are so small they’re barely big enough for a binding. But they’re mostly still intact so they don’t really seem to fit in scrap storage…it’s a problem. I’m trying to reevaluate how I store them, so I might switch things up. We’ll see. 

I pieced the backing from some of those larger small cuts that I don’t want anymore. Colors purchased for specific purposes that are now finished, and pieces that are too small to be usable. It’s not pretty. But it’s the back of a scrap quilt and I think that’s fine. I’d rather use it than have it languish in the drawer, and using it on a backing feels less wasteful than donating it or discarding it. 

I got it back from my quilter and had to wait to bind it because I had other pressing things. I was finishing up piecing the block components of the All the Good quilt and didn’t want to put on my walking foot, and then I had to dive into Halloween costumes. With those finished, I was finally able to bind it. Yay! The binding is scrappy from leftover bits of bindings from other quilts, in the colors of this quilt, so I thought it turned out great. And, it means that this entire quilt (save the batting...) is made from scraps. I think that's pretty great. What is not so great is the wavy binding. When this has happened in the past, I thought it might be that I was pulling the quilt and the binding unevenly, and I guess I must have been doing that this time. This time, I was too lazy to move my serger that sits next to my sewing machine, because this quilt isn't *that* big, but it looks like I needed the space. Oh well...done is better than perfect...

I thought about a possible name while I was binding, and it was hard. I thought about the colors...the wonkiness, the log cabin block...I felt stumped. And then I thought about Seattle, which often has such dreary weather, and gray and blue seem very Northwest to me. But when I've visited, we've always managed to get a few days of sun, like the bright pops of yellow. And Seattle, like the Northwest in general, is a little wonky and weird, which we love, right? Plus, I asked for a wavy quilting design, which kinda looks like waves, an Seattle is on the Sound...So, Seattle. *shrug*